


Absence

by sumiya



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:54:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumiya/pseuds/sumiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a letter in the post. Yanagi isn't as surprised as he should be, but he doesn't feel much nowadays, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absence

We have some mail today. Akaya has given us two tickets for the Rakuten Open, first row in the middle, for Genichirou and I. I read the note that came with them as well. He left them in the mailbox, probably after he unsuccessfully rang the bell enough times for the neighbors to call him out on it. Akaya insists he needs to talk to us, to give him some advice so he can smash his opponents and win the tournament.  There are some scratched-out lines but I can figure it out ‘worried’ and ‘buchou’ from the illegible mess. I believe he is worried about us, but the limits we had once set between us, to become unreachable on the courts, still hold him back to from voicing what I know that all of the former members of the Rikkai Tennis Team are thinking.

 

I put the tickets and the note on the floor outside of Genichirou’s room, next to the undrunk tea I had left for him in the morning. I have enough reasons to believe he hasn’t left the room again, today.

 

This is the fifth time this week I have bought take-away from the ramen house around the corner.

 

I reheat it in the microwave owen and eat half of it. The other half I leave next to the cold tea and Akaya’s message. I knock on Genichirou’s door again, but he doesn’t reply. Suppressing a sigh, I press my ear against the thin wall and hear the steady rhythm of his breathing and a grunt. Is he maybe getting a cold? Not likely. Probably, his throat is just dry. I open the door, slightly, just barely enough for me to peek inside.

 

Genichirou is there, the same as he has been for the last couple of months. There are some variations from time to time, like his arm over his eyes -as if he is shielding himself from the reality that consumes us both- or sitting in seiza and staring at the closed window,  or just sleeping successfully, achieving what years of meditation can’t dissipate from his mind. His hair has grown longer and his facial hair as well, but it is not as shiny as before and he doesn’t resemble a samurai from glorious old times, not as he used to. Genichirou’s eyes are usually tinted red and it is hard for me to tell the reason anymore. Is it because he hasn’t stopped crying or because he stares at where the garden is behind the curtains with vacant eyes and with none of his previous fire and zeal? I am not sure of the answer anymore.  

 

The heat inside of the room is suffocating, but he had yelled at me the last time that I had opened the window. Genichirou had said that if he couldn’t see the sun rising and setting, it would be as if time had frozen and the days wouldn’t pass by, in continuous successions. I know that it isn’t true. I know the days pass by because I get up in the morning, make tea for both us us, go to work and then return home. People walk by me, talk to me and sometimes there is the unusual event like Akaya’s gesture. Above all, I know time passes by because of the ‘absence’.

 

It is claimed that Einstein gave such a powerful speech over the reality of ‘absence’ and I must admit it is such a powerful thing. I know that the days and the weeks pass by, in the absence of groceries on the shelves or the absence of certain bills in the monthly mail; but above all, I know time passes by because of the absence of obligation.  

 

At first, it had been refreshing, even liberating to some degree. There had been no need to restrain ourselves to just eating home-made food to save money and no need to take as many as extra shifts as possible to pay for hospital fees and stays. There had been no need to live through impossible schedules to give Seiichi the life that couldn’t get on his own; there had been no need to keep everything spotlessly clean in case he was discharged from the hospital for a peaceful precious month, week or day.  

 

There is no need for that anymore.

 

Eventually, absence had turned into a sadness, in a form of a thin layer of white dust on the furniture, on the books, on the dojo’s floor. I think one time, I had written ‘ _clean me_ ’ on that floor, between contained bursts of laughter, in a childish manner that resembled how Akaya used to be so many years ago. The next day, I had realized the words couldn’t be read anymore because they had been erased by another layer of sadness.

 

I know Akaya is worried about us because we had cut any communications with _them_ after it happened, under the pretenses that I had been distracted the last time we saw each other, a month ago.

 

It is just that my mind can’t stop thinking about how this white dust will finally cover Genichirou and myself one day; that when this absence finally engulfs us all, it will finally bury the ‘I love you’ that I carefully write next to Genichirou and Seiichi’s names on the kitchen table every night before bed.

 


End file.
